William F. Buckley, Jr. - A Man For All Seasons

In my father's extensive library, collected while he was in medical school at Harvard, were two large tomes that caught my eye when I was 14 years old - Whittaker Chamber's Witness and Buckley's God and Man at Yale.

I was impressed that Mr. Chambers would defect from the Workers of the World revolution, couple his idealism with sober realism, and reveal the truth of the Communist infiltrator, Alger Hiss, to a scathingly unbelieving world. My friends were similarly and militantly unbelieving.

I thought his book heroic amid the turmoil of the Sixties, with all my Leftist friends yelling "screw you" to the adult world that had given us Freakin' Don't-Ask-I-Don't-Give-A-Damn Vietnam, Valium popping moms ratting and hairspraying their beehive hairdos, and fathers in thin-lapelled suits, trying to keep it all together (or not and having an affair).

I never bought it.

There was something disingenuous about it all. I thought my generation did protest too much. It wasn't until much later that I read a Nobel Prize winning economist (other than Milton Friedman) link the hypocrisy of the 1950s to liberal parents who did not live their ideals. This sounded like the 50s and 60s I lived through, for many of my friends were liberal.

And while they were always "more real and more authentic" in their own eyes, they were not a little hypocritical in it all.

Oddly, and not without a measure of irony, the Era of Sexual Freedom, for all its so-called liberation, and at its core, treated women as objects. That I saw in the actions of my reactionary friends who loved to tell me about George Washington's indiscretions late in his life, all the while their indiscreet obsessions sent one beautiful young woman to the psych ward of a local hospital early in her young life.

Indelibly carved in my mind during that Decade of Decadence (the 60s) was the book that dared challenge Yale's, and by extension, the nation's godless direction, for its lack of truth and light, even though those words were, according to my sources, inscribed in Hebrew (Urim and Thummim) on Yale's crest.

William F. Buckley's quietus this past week hands the torch of Light and Truth to a younger generation, and with it comes a sense of deep loss, as I have noted the passings of leftist John Kenneth Galbraith, noted Keynesian economist at Harvard and economic advisor to President John Kennedy; of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Freidman, heir to Adam Smith and Ludwig von Mises, and principal champion of Free Market economics. These are three men whose loss I mourn. Not to mention Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose burly ectomorph chassis I identify with (though I'll pass on the bowties).

Freidman and Buckley loved to ski where my best buddy, the late Dr. Gary Mertlich, sociologist at the University of Toledo, taught me that same love - on the slopes of Alta, Utah. Gary and I enjoyed a Left/Right relationship similar to Buckley and John Kenneth Galbraith (me being Buckley). Similarly, I rejoice in the knowledge that Bill and Mr. Galbraith, likewise, had an intellectually vigorous friendship and correspondence.

When Gary and I were kids, he made a ski slope in his back yard with an old door elevated and meticulously covered with snow to give me enough speed to do a snow-plow. Little could I realize the hidden agenda, when he left me at the top of a ski run at Alta, on my first day skiing, laughing as he skied away (which made him more like Galbraith).

In today's self-righteous, pundit-posturing political domain (at both ends - Left and Right!), there needs to be more political ecumenicalism, and a Buckleyesque civility in debate (excepting the Gore Vidal exchange; but that's been settled, in court even, as Mr.Vidal needs to move on). http://nationalreview.com/

William F. Buckley, conservative advocate, founder and editor of the National Review, host on Firing Line, interviewed, wholeheartedly teased, and debated the greatest minds of our Modern Age, giving us balance during the Season of Excess that was the Sixties.

His influence powerfully spanned six decades and all seasons of political and cultural intrigue.

Requiescat In Pace, William F. Buckley, friend, and man for all seasons.


[Charlie Rose's final tribute to Mr. Buckley is touching.]

China and Cuba are the "Real" Communism

While in the picturesque college town of Trujillo, in the mountains of Venezuela, I had the rare opportunity, 32 years ago, of living among and talking with some of the best and the brightest students of Latin America at the time. I was serving an LDS mission there during the mid-70s.

On first arriving in the city, after the drive up the long ravine leading to the town, the central square opened to our view as though I'd walked into a movie set - white stucco 18th-century Catholic church, quaint shops surrounding the plaza, and a government building, seat of power for the state of Trujillo. We took residence in a youth hostel full of college students on the main townsquare, and occupied a simple bedroom room with two cots, and a communal shower.

In that huddle of young men, idealistic and passionate for the causes they would soon dedicate their entire lives, I spoke to a few of them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

One young man, with whom I had a brief discussion, and to whom I handed a Book of Mormon, handed me a small book of essays by the positivist philosopher Bertrand Russell, and effectively bore his "testimony" of how China and Cuba were the real Communism. Russia was too much like the United States - white, European. "Look to China and Cuba for the future, as they were closest to the people," he said.

I awoke this morning with his words ringing in my ears: China and Cuba are the real Communism!

I also knew that the man in China responsible for the dog food poisonings in the United States was taken out into a field and shot. And the black men who highjacked an airplane in an attempt to land in the United States, were forced to turn back to Cuba and after a five-day trial, were also shot.

The famous World War II cartoonist, Bill Mauldin, drew a scathing political cartoon decrying the hypocrisy of Fidel Castro's uprising. In the executions that followed Castro's revolution in 1959, prisoners were tied to a pole and summarily shot. In his cartoon, Mauldin drew three prisoners tied to stakes, readied for execution.

The first man is slumped down, kneeling, head hanging, having just been shot but still alive. Above him, nonchalantly pointing a .45 caliber pistol at the condemned man's head, is a bearded, cigar-smoking Che Guevarra-looking revolutionary, uniformed like Castro, with his sleeves rolled up for the ugly work at hand.

Behind this Che-faced executioner, who has one eye closed, the other cocked open as he aims down the pistol sight to administer the coup de gras, stands another Castro-capped, rifle-toting thug tying up a second prisoner who is looking grimly at the ugly fate awaiting him. This second bearded brigand, a Marxist-Leninist, whispers in the condemned man's ears: "Think what could happen to you if we weren't idealists."

Mauldin added: "Fidel came out of the hills like Robin Hood and...began acting like the Sheriff of Nottingham."

And that is the true Communism.

Principal Ancestors They Never Were

Recently the LDS Church has dropped a phrase from its introduction to the Book of Mormon, and, in doing so, invoked the ridicule and derision of all who tell half-truths, wipe their mouths, and say they've done no wrong.

Here, for you dear reader, is a more full citation of the controversial passage: "The Book of Mormon...is a record of God's dealings with the ancient inhabitants of the Americas and contains, as does the Bible, the fulness of the everlasting gospel.

"The book was written by many ancient prophets by the spirit of prophecy and revelation. Their words, written on gold plates, [Any of this sounding familiar?] were quoted and abridged by a prophet-historian named Mormon. [Now that name has got to be familiar.] The record gives an account of two great civilizations. One came from Jerusalem in 600 B.C., and afterward separated into two nations, known as the Nephites and the Lamanites. The other came much earlier when the Lord confounded the tongues at the Tower of Babel. This group is known as the Jaredites. After thousands of years, all were destroyed except the Lamanites, [Now here it is.] and they are the principal ancestors of the American Indians." (You are invited to read the whole book ;) yourself at http://www.blogger.com/www.lds.org !)

For many decades, I've suspected we were too ambitious to think that the books in The Book of Mormon were the complete annals of the broader Meso-American history. Like the Bible, the Book of Mormon is a record of a single family's dealings within a much broader scope of history. In this context of a small thread woven into a large tapestry, things are bound to get lost, covered in jungle and dirt, and destroyed. (How's that for mixing metaphors!)

Against that larger tapestry of Pre-Columbian and Meso-American history, is it not reasonable that the specific stories of the families and the more limited history that The Book of Mormon covers might possibly be harder to discern in the many-threaded tapestry of archeology, and thus, take many years to unearth and unravel? Indeed, one prophet wrote that he could not write a hundreth of all that could be written of his people!

[For a pleasant and thoughtful journey through Guatemala and Mexico, and the most up-to-date scholarship, covering such questions as DNA, the Hebraic poetic form of chiasmus, and metal in the Book of Mormon, see the DVD Journey of Faith: The New World from the Neil A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship at http://www.byu.edu/ )

Time magazine ran an article a few years back, claiming that the history contained in the Bible had few solid archeological proofs, citing that they had only recently found a shard of pottery with the name of "David King of Israel" inscribed on it. The point being: Give The Book of Mormon a bit of breathing room! ( Also, go to the Jewish intellectual journal Commentary for an exciting story on the recent discovery of the personal palace of Solomon.) Need I say: In archeology great discoveries are uncovered everyday! http://www.commentarymagazine.com

Recently Mormon archeologists and scholars have refined their conclusions and views from those of early Mormon scholars like B. H. Roberts. He and others thought that the "narrow neck of land" spoken of in the scripture was Panama, and that the Nephites would have been the Peruvians and the Lamanites...well, you get the old picture.

These kinds on unfolding truths, only help to solidify my faith, not rattle it.

Every Scientific System has Unproven Postulates

"The world prides itself on "hard" evidence, on objectivity, on the strength of consensus. However, as a philosopher of knowledge, I can only shake my head. For I know and can prove that there is no such thing as evidence apart from a matrix of presuppositions, that objectivity is at best consensus, and that consensus is often but a public relations job. Every scientific system begins with unproven postulates. Every person founds his life on articles of faith." -Dr. Chauncey C. Riddle, philosopher.

When I read Dr. Riddle's article (Ensign, September 1975), I was 20 years old and had completed my first year at a major university under a track scholarship, emerging from the experience fairly beat-up and abused by professors hell-bent on faith-busting.

During that year, taking philosophy, psychology and political science, I marveled as the godless, angry, agenda-driven professors railed on every form of faith, especially Mormonism - their particular favorite along the Wasatch Front mountain range. They prided themselves on their "hard" facts, the truth of their position, the strength of their consensus. After taking so many barrages against religious belief, one gained some consolation at their being knocked down a notch by someone in their own league.

It wasn't till many decades later that I learned what an affront to decency such attacks were. A good friend, whose father had won an Oscar for his lighting designs, told me that she'd recently experienced the same kinds of attacks from professors here in Salt Lake.

But she spoke up - not having been in the Church all her life, and having had no small amount of experience in the world. She raised her hand and told the professor that had he railed on Jews or Catholics anywhere back East, as he had just done to Mormons, he would have been decried, and even shouted down, as a bigot.

"Somehow," she continued, "because it's Mormons, it's okay to do here in Salt Lake?"

I've often mused: Where did they get their license? It must have come from when they were undergraduates, and their Leftist professors told them that it would be a noble thing to dedicate their lives to jumping into the fire of religious bigoty - the last great bastion of backwoods narrow-mindedness - Utah!

Were they told that it would be like voter registration in the South during the 50s and 60s? Come! Come to Utah, and drag these bumbling, fertile, mindless obediatrons into the 20th Century of "enlightened" scientific positivism! How could they equate Mormons with what happened to those heroic young college students at the hands of those over-fed, good-ole-boys, impudently grinning at the photographer at their mock trial?

How is it morally equivalent - the murderers with those fatboy cheeks stuffed with chaw, the corner of their lips dripping in racism, juxtaposed to the Mormon widow fasting each month and giving her small mite, every thing she has, to feed the poor in her neighborhood?

And don't tell me about Mormons being blindly obedient! The simple cross-kite that's anchored to something solid, (and yes, perhaps weighed down with a bit of cumbersome baggage of a tail) flies much higher than the most sophisticated untethered box-kite. But that's another essay.

All of us found our lives on unproven postulates - upon articles of faith. But how wonderful to ground our faith on a rock - on personal revelation, on the Rock of Our Salvation, Jesus Christ!